PROVIDENCE, R.I. — While the city will spend about $2.7 million on zoo operations this year, the administration of Mayor Angel Taveras wants to phase out that support, arguing that others should pay a larger share of the tourist attraction’s operatin

When it’s done, zoo visitors will see cows, chickens, three breeds of goats, Texel sheep, alpacas and a miniature donkey as well as the Rhode Island jewelry maker’s name on the exhibit.

Sponsorships have become an important source of revenue for the zoo, which is owned by the city but run by the nonprofit Rhode Island Zoological Society.

According to its 2012 financial statement, sponsorships and special exhibits brought in $1.53 million, the second-biggest source of income after the $2.8 million from admission fees.

While the city will spend about $2.7 million on zoo operations this year, the administration of Mayor Angel Taveras wants to phase out that support, arguing that others should pay a larger share of the tourist attraction’s operating costs.

Trend to privatize

Over the past decade or so, more and more cities and counties across the country, confronting dwindling resources, have turned over their zoos — and the costs of running them — to nonprofits like the Rhode Island Zoological Society.

“Today, approximately 70 percent of all Association of Zoos and Aquariums accredited zoos are privately managed, most through a private nonprofit,” said David Walsh, president and chief adviser with Zoo Advisors LLC in Hempstead, Pa.

Walsh said such arrangements can benefit both sides. Municipalities get a sometimes expensive operation off their books and the societies get more flexibility to run the zoos. But it comes at a price, he noted, because with greater control comes more financial responsibility for the primary managers of the zoos.

That’s been the case in Providence since 2005, when the city turned management of the 40-acre zoo to the zoological society, giving it financial, marketing and operational control.

Goodman said the agreement between the city and the society has guaranteed the zoo a core of employees and the flexibility to respond faster to its needs.

City Parks Supt. Robert F. McMahon said that before the society took over day-to-day management in 2005, there were times when the zoo needed supplies that the Parks and Recreation Department had little expertise in acquiring.

“We had to buy beetles. And squid, for the penguins,” McMahon said. “They were better at that.”

The city’s support

According to the society’s 2012 financial statements, it cost the society $7.9 million to run the zoo. Not included in that number is the $2.7 million the city pays for the salaries and benefits for 31 zookeepers and veterinarian technicians, as well as the zoo’s utilities, McMahon said.

Also, for the last several years, the city has given the zoological society $471,000 a year for general support. But this year the society and the city agreed to reduce that by $300,000.

It’s a trend the Taveras administration wants to see continue.

[zoo-poll]

The city and the society are negotiating a new management contract to replace the 10-year deal, which expires in June 2015. The city’s ultimate objective, Finance Director Lawrence Mancini told the City Council’s Ways and Means Committee in May, was to “cut the cord” on how much the city will subsidize the zoo budget.

Goodman said the society isn’t opposed to taking on more of the zoo’s costs, but he cautioned that there would have to be a transition period: “$3 million is a lot to do all at once.”

Statewide responsibility

City Councilman Bryan Principe said that, though the zoo was a point of pride for the city, it was also a prime statewide attraction.

“There is no state subsidy for that,” he said. He said the city was paying $2.7 million for something that benefits the state. “I’m tired of that.”

The zoo has benefited from statewide taxpayer support, particularly on bond issues. In 2006, an $11-million statewide bond issue for the zoo was approved with 68 percent of the vote. It was part of an overall $35-million expansion that modernized the elephant exhibit, built the North American Trail exhibit and financed a veterinary hospital and quarantine center.

Gallery:
Roger Williams Park Zoo seeks private sponsorships

Voters may get another chance to help out. In the final weeks of the General Assembly’s session, House of Representative spokesman Larry Berman said the chamber will include putting an $18-million zoo bond referendum on the ballot in November.

If the state Senate and Governor Chafee agree, that will give voters a chance to decide whether to help finance a plan that would convert the existing education center into a reptile facility, construct space for rare and endangered tropical rainforest animals and improve roads and bridges in the rest of the park.

Zoo’s history

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What is today the state’s second most popular tourist attraction, behind the Newport mansions, began in 1872 with a small menagerie of raccoons, guinea pigs, rabbits, hawks and anteaters in a corner of the 102 acres Betsey Williams, the great-great-great-granddaughter of Roger, donated to the city as a park.

Within 20 years it had tigers; by the 1930s, elephants; in the 1960s, it added bison, deer and bears. The zoo covers about 40 acres with exhibits featuring about 100 species, from tiny insects to giraffes.

The zoological society began in 1962 as a nonprofit organization to support the zoo’s programs. It now runs one of the largest zoos in the Northeast. Under its administration, attendance has been increasing, from 570,442 in 2009 to 646,752 in 2013, according to zoo statistics.

The zoo and the society have also been cited for their work in keeping members of endangered species alive at the zoo and for helping preserve habitats around the globe.

McMahon said he’s noted that success and is trying to organize a Friends of Roger Williams Park that might be able to provide private and corporate support for the rest of the park just as the society has done for the zoo.

Sponsorships

One way the society has filled the gap is with sponsorships. Besides the Alex & Ani farmyard, it has “Our Big Back Yard,” a nature-based play area for children sponsored by toymaker Hasbro. It’s connected to the “All Kids Can Treehouse,” an exhibit made possible by CVS Caremark. Citizens Bank and Textron have also participated in exhibits and events.

Goodman said fundraising relationships and events have to be carefully vetted; zoos can’t slap sponsorships decals on animals as if they were NASCAR racers. He said everything has to be connected to the zoo’s mission of education and environmental preservation.

An example is the annual Jack-O-Lantern Spectacular, when the zoo’s trails are decorated with thousands of carved and painted pumpkins. It has attracted more than 100,000 visitors some years, making it one of the society’s top fundraising successes.

But Goodman said zoo leadership grappled with the decision of whether to do the first one. The big concern was that it was pumpkins, not animals, he said, and some said they didn’t see a clear connection to the zoo’s mission.

In the end, the society’s board decided to try it, figuring it would bring people into and through the zoo, and the ones who would come would be families with kids, exactly the audience the zoo wanted to reach.

McMahon said he recalled a similar back-and-forth over the 1992 exhibition of robotic but real-looking dinosaurs. McMahon recalled how Tony Vecchio, then the zoo’s director, was adamantly against the exhibit because they were machines and not living creatures. But they were the product of serious research and would educate people on how extinct animals might have looked, that tied into the zoo’s conservation and species preservation message, so they tried it.

“Then they made $500,000 on that,” McMahon said, “and Tony said ‘Bring me more dinosaurs!’”

The exhibit returned a half dozen times over the next 14 years.

Related:

Elephants remain big draw at Roger Williams Park Zoo

Gallery:
Roger Williams Park Zoo seeks private sponsorships

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